US Immigration Agency Misidentified Applicants, Botched Card Delivery - Watchdog

US Citizenship and Immigration Services in recent years produced at least 19,000 ID cards that contained incorrect information, were issued in duplicate, or were sent to a wrong address, the Department of Homeland Security’s office of inspector general concluded in a report.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Most of the card errors were due to flawed design and functionality in the agency’s Electronic Immigration System, the release said.

“It appears that thousands of Green Cards have simply gone missing," DHS Inspector General John Roth said in a Monday press release on the report’s findings. "In the wrong hands, Green Cards may enable terrorists, criminals, and undocumented aliens to remain in the United States."

Among other errors, the report found that during the past three years the immigration agency produced thousands of cards that misidentified 2,400 immigrants who had been approved for a two-year conditional residency as having 10-year eligibility. It also received more than 200,000 reports of cards potentially misdelivered or undelivered to approved applicants.

Citizenship and Immigration Services has taken steps to recover the erroneously issued and missing cards, but efforts to fix the underlying problems have fallen short, the inspector general’s report found, according to the release.